The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

Despite accounting for a significant fraction of total litigation in Italy, small claims litigation has so far received little attention. Using a Ministry of Justice database that contains information disaggregated by subject matter, the paper provides a thorough description of the time trend...

This paper reviews the main macroeconomic trends and the debate on policy priorities in Italy since the end of the Nineties. In the decade up to the outbreak of the global crisis (1998-2007), in Italy the reform process came to a virtual standstill; this is partly due to the fragmentation of the...

We propose a portfolio selection model based on a class of monotone preferences that coincide with mean-variance preferences on their domain of monotonicity, but differ where mean-variance preferences fail to be monotone and are therefore not economically meaningful. The functional associated to...

The paper analyses the sharp divergence in the nineties between capital formation in the main euro area countries, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. We have used data from the OECD's International Sectoral Data Base (ISDB), which includes data comparable across a certain...

The question addressed by this study is whether consumers remember past prices correctly. We test Italian citizens� memory for cinema prices with questionnaires distributed to moviegoers. The analysis concentrates on the memory of pre-euro prices, but the recall for a more recent period is...

We use household survey data to construct a direct measure of absolute risk aversion based on the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay to buy a risky asset. We relate this measure to a set of consumers� decisions that in theory should vary with attitude towards risk. We find that...

This paper studies the interaction between monetary and fiscal authorities while investors are coordinating on a speculative attack. The authorities want to achieve specific targets for output and inflation but also to avoid a regime change (i.e. sovereign default). They use the traditional...

This paper considers the role of preferences in explaining trust. By using the Bank of Italy�s Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), the paper shows that time preferences and risk preferences are key covariates of self-reported trust. They both predict negatively a measure of...

This paper examines the results of a survey carried out in 2007 by the Bank of Italy concerning different characteristics of the organization of lending activities. Between 2003 and 2006 the physical distance between the headquarters and the branches increased, the limits to the decision-making...